Some bankruptcy experts said that it now appears increasingly unlikely that creditors will be able to get their hands on the city-owned art collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

But experts also said that even in the wake of tentative agreements between the city and Detroit retirees and pensioners, the bondholders and others pushing hard for a sale of art still have viable legal arguments. It’s therefore too early to predict whether or not Detroit’s emergency manager might still be pressured into putting DIA art back on the table, they said.

“I agree that it’s unlikely that creditors will be able to get to the art, but their arguments are not frivolous that they should be entitled to a greater share given the way this plan is shaping up,” said Melissa Jacoby, a University of North Carolina law professor who is closely following the Detroit bankruptcy.

Like every aspect of the Detroit bankruptcy, the legal issues surrounding the DIA and its multibillion-dollar collection remain a landscape of uncharted territory and foggy complexities. For example, the Michigan attorney general has issued an opinion that the art can’t be sold because it’s held in the public trust, but experts disagree whether this would hold up in court.

A key question is whether the arguments of creditors making a play for the art will be potent enough to convince U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes to deny emergency manager Kevyn Orr’s restructuring plan for the city — including its centerpiece $816-million rescue plan for art and pensions.

While neither the judge nor creditors in a Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy can force cities to sell assets such as art, Rhodes can push Orr to wring more value out of assets to pay off debt or improve city services, and Rhodes can reject Orr’s plan of adjustment for city finances if he believes it isn’t fair, equitable or viable.

Orr’s plan, which was formally endorsed this week by pension officials representing general city retirees and police and fire personnel, rests on the infusion of $816 million over 20 years to shore up pensions. As part of this so-called grand bargain, the pension boards agreed to drop legal challenges to Orr’s plan and the DIA will be granted its independence from city ownership. The money will come from national and local charitable foundations, the state of Michigan and the DIA itself.

A group of creditors led by bond insurers Syncora and Financial Guaranty Insurance have objected vehemently to the grand bargain in court. Last week, they filed documents that said four investors had offered bids of up to $2 billion to buy some or all of the DIA’s art — roughly doubling the amount Orr has proposed.

Bankruptcy experts said Syncora and its allies have three main legal arguments against a plan that doesn’t sell art: They can argue that it’s not in the best interests of creditors, that it discriminates unfairly against them, and that it’s not fair and equitable.

Laura Bartell, a bankruptcy law professor at Wayne State University, said the chance that creditors will now be able to force the city into selling art have gone from “remote to nil.”

On the one hand, Bartell said the court will ask if the plan treats creditors better than if the city were not in bankruptcy. The answer would be yes, because, absent the bankruptcy proceeding, the amount they would recover would be uncertain at best. At the same time, Bartell said unfair treatment doesn’t mean that pensioners can’t be treated better than other creditors; it means that the difference in treatment does not have a rational basis.

“There’s a very significant rationale for treating the pensioners better than bondholders,” she said. “Legally, they’re protected by the Michigan Constitution, and they are also people who have worked for the city and are in great need, so this is not unfair discrimination.”

But others, including David Skeel, author of “Debt’s Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America,” argue that Orr’s plan so clearly favors pensioners over other groups of creditors that it qualifies as unfair discrimination. “Giving pension beneficiaries nearly 100% of what they are owed, and bondholders less than 20%, is obvious discrimination,” Skeel wrote in this week’s edition of the Weekly Standard magazine.

Experts say that it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for Orr to get judicial approval for his restructuring plan without accounting for the value of DIA art in some way.

Craig Barbarosh, a California-based bankruptcy attorney, said creditors might still be able to convince Rhodes that they are entitled to a better deal — and that the art is a fair source of revenue. On the other hand, the city can argue that the grand bargain accounts for the art in a way that ensures survival of the museum and that the DIA is an integral component of a viable post-bankruptcy Detroit.

“Certainly that’s politically more palatable, but you have to be careful about speculating about what a judge will do,” said Barbarosh. “Financial discussions with bondholders are continuing, and a lot can still happen.”